


the death of me, will always be you

by xansayshi



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Captain America: The First Avenger, Jealousy, One-sided pining, Pining, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7305961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xansayshi/pseuds/xansayshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is in love with Steve, but he doesn't tell him. Ever. </p><p>Bucky and his feelings for Steve through the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the death of me, will always be you

He didn’t expect it to hurt so fucking much. 

He knew, right from the start that he could never have him. That’s not how it worked. He was supposed to meet a nice girl, take her dancing a few times, get married, have some kids. That's how it worked. 

He was never supposed to fall in love with his best friend. But he did and as much as he tried to hide it, he could never hide it from himself. He was fully aware of his feelings for his skinny, asthmatic, punk ass best friend, just as he was fully aware that he’d never be able to do anything about it. 

\--

He’d been in their tiny excuse for an apartment. He’d had an awful day at work and he just wanted to relax but there had been a stray cat in the alley that wouldn’t stop howling. He walked past Steve doodling some sketches at their lone table in the kitchen, opened the door to the fridge, groaned at how empty it was, closed the door and leaned his head against it. He could hear the humming of the electricity, but it didn’t drown out that fucking cat. His head made a thunk, thunk, thunk sound as he let it fall against the refrigerator, repeatedly. 

“I’m gonna do it, Steve. Don’t try to stop me.” 

Still drawing, Steve didn’t even look up. “Do what, Buck?”

He opens his mouth to respond, only to be cut off by another scream from the alley. Wincing at the sound he says, “I’m gonna kill that fucking cat.” 

Finally looking up from his sketching, Steve snorts and quirks an eyebrow at him. “Really? C’mon, the poor cat is probably just as hungry as you are. Besides, it ain’t hurting anybody.”

“It’s hurting my eardrums,” Bucky mumbled as he slumped in the chair next to Steve, who had flipped to a new page and was now doodling more intently than he had been before. Once again concentrating on his drawings, Steve responded, “Yeah, well. You hurt my poor ears with your snoring every night but you don’t see me complaining.” 

“I do not snore. Besides, you’re supposed to be asleep.” 

“I wake up earlier than you do. And half the time you snore so loud that I wake up anyway. Can’t get a decent nights sleep around here with you rumbling away all night long.” Steve looks up from his paper, grinning. Bucky knows Steve Is just teasing, but gives him a look anyway. Abruptly, Steve tears out the page he’s been working on and says, “You wanna see?” 

Bucky eyes him suspiciously. Steve not usually this eager to share his sketches. He’ll show them to Bucky whenever he asks, but usually it's accompanied by flushing cheeks and a self deprecating comment. And he hardly ever offers. But Steve’s still grinning at him and how can he resist? He looks down at the sketch of...Bucky being attacked by an alley cat. His eyes widen and the “Hey!-” is barely past his lips when Steve busts up laughing. He’s still laughing even when Bucky crumples up the paper and throws it at Steve’s head. 

“You punk!” 

“Jerk! Hey I worked hard on that!” Steve laughs, retaliating by throwing it back at Bucky’s face. 

“Yeah, yeah, sure you did. It was a real hard 3 minutes.” By now they’re both laughing, the alley cat outside long gone and forgotten. The streets outside are quiet when their chuckles finally die down and they’re left sitting at the table smiling at each other. 

Even though he can feel the chill seeping in through his socks and there is hardly any food in the fridge, sitting at that little table across from Steve, Bucky thinks _I don’t need anything more than this. Just so long as Steve’s here with me._ Then he thinks, _Oh shit._

Later that night after Steve’s gone to sleep, Bucky goes back out the kitchen and finds the crumpled up doodle. He flattens it out against the table and folds it neatly into a little square and tucks it into his jacket pocket. Steve doesn’t ask about where the drawing went and Bucky never says another word about it. 

\--

After that, Bucky learned to live with the constant weight in his chest. Loving Steve became an ache that he never wanted to be rid of. It was like a bruise that he couldn’t stop poking. Each time Steve looked at him or affectionately called him names he could feel the pain and longing flare up and he knew he should do something about it, move out maybe or at least find another place that had two separate rooms for christ sake, but the thought of leaving Steve hurt more than his bruised heart so he stayed put. 

Bucky wasn't a fool. He knew that he wanted what he could never have, so he went on dates and took girls dancing, dragging Steve along because, if he was being honest with himself, he was selfish. He always wanted Steve close by, so he took him on double dates with girls who would never want a second date. It filled Bucky with a sick sort of pleasure when Steve’s dates failed because he knew that it would hurt like hell when he finally found a dame worth a damn and with a brain in her skull who could see that despite his short stature and asthma and slight deafness in his right ear, Steve was a catch. So every time Steve went home without a goodnight kiss or with, on one particularly bad date, a handshake and a head nod, Bucky couldn’t help it when he smiled a little bigger. Steve probably thought that Bucky was smiling because his date had gone much better, but really it was because there was nothing that Bucky enjoyed more than walking home with Steve by his side. 

\--

Bucky knew that when he finally lost Steve, it would be bad. But he figured he’d just swallow his feelings, hide his pain just like he always had. He just hadn’t expected it to be so devastating. 

He could feel his heart crumbling, after they’d marched, all night and all the next day back from that godforsaken Hydra base and back into Allied territory and he’d seen her making her way over to them. He took one look at Steve looking at her and at her looking back at him and he knew that this was it. He hadn’t meant to say it, really had no control over the words coming out of his mouth, mean and mocking, “Let's hear it for Captain America” but then everyone was cheering and he smiled when Steve looked at him, but when he looked back at her, he clenched his jaw and tried to look away. 

Steve found him, afterwards in a bar. He tried to ignore the pain in his chest, after all he’d been doing just fine with it for years. But he can’t ignore the way the pain amplifies, threatens to nearly break him apart when Agent Carter walks in wearing that dress and then promptly ignores him. He knows then that it's over, had never begun and for some reason the thought of mourning something that never was seems so stupid and he becomes suddenly furious. He wants to smash every glass and bottle in the bar. He wants to rip the hair from his head and scream. He can feel himself clenching the glass in his hand a little too hard, so he unclenches his fingers and slips away, unnoticed as Steve and Agent Carter make eyes at each other. 

\--

Bucky doesn’t talk about it but he was knows what it’s like to be tortured, strapped to that table in the dark, dank basement of that Hydra facility. He doesn’t talk about it and so he lets Steve think that his distance, his aloofness is a result of that. His sleeplessness is a result of Hydra, of the nightmares and the flashbacks. His numbness is a torture of his own making. 

He must be some kind of masochist because when they tell him he has the option to go home he refuses. 

“You’re a prisoner of war, Buck. You don’t have to stay.” He knows that Steve’s not really pushing him away, but it's hard to focus through the haze of pain and bitterness. So he pushes back, giving him a glare.

“Of course I have to stay.” 

“Bucky, you’ve done more than enou-”

“I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE, STEVE.” Startled by his own outburst, Bucky turns away. He attempts at some levity, calling over his shoulder, “Someone’s got to stay to save your punk ass.” 

Steve calls after him, but doesn’t follow. 

\--

So Bucky stays by Steve's side, silent and bitter and brooding. He lets Steve think that it’s all because of Hydra, and doesn’t let himself think at all. He keeps Steve out of trouble like he always has; seems like his whole damn life has been keeping Steve out of trouble. He disappears when Agent Carter appears and he tries, he really does try to listen when Steve talks about her, but sometimes it’s too much and so he just nods and keeps his jaw clenched and his fists balled tight in his pockets. Steve must have noticed because he tries to bring it up one day. 

“Dunno why you won’t talk to her Buck. I’m sure you’d like her if you didn’t run the other way whenever you see her coming. She won’t bite, I mean probably not. She would if she had to, she’s tough like that. I ever tell you about my first day at basic when she punched a guy square in the face? It was incredible, you shoulda seen it!” Bucky can’t bear to hear him talk about her anymore so he shuts down the conversation with a terse, “I’m happy for you Stevie, I really am. Just don’t wanna step on your toes when you’re with your gal. Didn’t I always tell you you’d find a girl one day?” 

Then quieter, he adds, “Just wish you didn’t have to join the war to find her.” 

The look Steve gives him is strange, concern and something else, something he can’t quite figure out painting Steve’s beautiful face and Bucky tries not to think about it.

\--

He likes it best when they’re out on assignment. When it's just Steve and Bucky and the Commandos. He spends his days watching Steve through his rifle scope, making sure he gets the HYDRA goons before they get Steve and spends his nights on watch or occasionally laughing with his team around a fire (when they can make one) telling stories about Steve when he was small, intentionally choosing the most embarrassing ones just to see the blush and the sheepish way that he rubs his neck as he attempts to defend himself. 

He likes when they have a mission because this is how he and Steve work best, fighting against a common enemy, for a greater good. Or at least that’s what he tells himself. He absolutely does not admit that he likes missions because Agent Carter stays at base, even though he knows it's true. 

So he follows Steve all over Europe. He sleeps in the woods, in caves, on fucking snow covered mountains. He smiles back when Steve smiles at him, even though his smiles are sometimes tight and forced and Steve’s smiles are not as big and bright as they used to be, which is a goddamn shame and Bucky wants to tear them apart with his bare hands, HYDRA and the Nazis and everyone who thought war was a good idea because it was never supposed to get to him. The war was never supposed to touch Steve but it did and now all Bucky can do is minimize the damage. Bucky will shoot every enemy and take every bullet if it means that Steve can walk away from this. And Bucky knows its over for him, because even if he wasn’t taken and fucked over by HYDRA in every possible way, he’d still be ruined because he’s so in love with Steve and a world where Steve is injured or broken is unacceptable and he’d rather die than see that happen.

So Bucky smiles back and cracks jokes just to make Steve laugh and puts his brave face on and readily follows Captain America into the jaws of death, all because Steve Rogers asked him to.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote 3/4 of this in a mad dash of inspiration one night and it sat in a folder for months. I got tired of staring at it and I finally finished it, but I don't know if it's what I wanted it to be. My original notes on this were "UGH I KIND OF HATE THIS ITS ALL JUST ANGST ITS SO DUMB", lol. 
> 
> So thanks for making it this far! Comments are appreciated and my other fics are much sillier I promise.


End file.
